


Disturb the Universe

by SidleyParkHermit



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-09 12:56:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19888186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SidleyParkHermit/pseuds/SidleyParkHermit
Summary: The wizard in Peggy’s sitting room looked contemplative. "So, you finished your tidying. Returned all the objects of unfathomable power to their cradles." Her mouth quirked in what was almost a smile. "All, except your own human soul."





	Disturb the Universe

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the story_works flashfic challenge "Midsummer/Midwinter Magic." Originally [posted on LJ](https://story-works.livejournal.com/77122.html).
> 
> I haven't finished watching Agent Carter yet, and have made no attempt to locate this chronologically in relation to any events of the TV series. Thank you to various residents of both the BFU discord and the story_works discord for answering my questions of, like, "Just give me a baseline here, for characterization reasons, what's the weirdest kind of shit Peggy Carter's already seen?" (Without spoiling any Agent Carter plotlines for anyone else, I sure am glad I asked!)

Things had a way of happening to the people Peggy was close to. She'd spent a lot of time thinking about that. Bad things. Strange things. Sometimes both.

The time machine was a new kind of strange, though. Even for Peggy, the time machine was a lot.

Steve Rogers, whom she had longed for and dreamed of for — somehow it actually felt so much longer than the years since his plane had gone down, it felt like lifetimes. Returned to her from a future whose darkness she could, so far, only infer. That was a lot.

She’d assumed that this was as queer as things could possibly get for at least a little while, and God only knew she was going to need a lot of time to think about it all. So when a fire-ringed hole in reality appeared in her sitting room and a bald woman in monastic saffron robes stepped through, it really was upsetting. Peggy didn’t even have her gun. Although she wasn’t going to make a dash for the gun just yet. She could see, after all, as they both stood to meet the intruder, that Steve looked only mildly surprised.

The bald woman looked around Peggy’s sitting room curiously. "Which of you has the device?" she said. "I’m going to have to take a look at it."

"You could’ve knocked," Steve said. The woman tilted her head at him, and after a second’s pause Steve seemed to realize something and stuck his hand out. "Steve Rogers, uh, Ms. … Sorcerer. We’ve actually already met. Or, we will, in the future. Your future, my past."

"Your past, certainly," said the bald woman, clasping Steve's hand momentarily. "But not my future."

"I... was there," Steve said, the smallest uncertainty in his voice.

"I believe you," the woman said. "And in the universe next door where you came from, there is a sister self of mine, split off from my universe by your actions, who will no doubt be happy to meet you. At least, you seem like someone that people are usually happy to meet."

"She was. You — will be. Ma’am, I know this is your specialty, but. I think you must have made a mistake. I put all the Infinity Stones back."

"... _All_. The Infinity Stones," she said, with a faint concern rising in her voice. " _Back_."

"Yeah," Steve said, with a hint of defensiveness. "Starting with yours, 'cause after that it got pretty tough. But I did it. Look, my job on the team is not the quantum physics — or the space magic," he added off the woman’s look, "but I’m not an idiot. I was told exactly what I needed to do. I went back with all six stones — and Mjölnir —" or at least it sounded like he said Mjölnir, but that was something out of Norse mythology, so Peggy probably hadn’t heard right. "And I took care of everything."

" _And_ Mjölnir," said the bald sorcerer, who sounded English and looked elven. (The word clearly was Mjölnir. And the sorcerer clearly was pretending to sound impressed.) "Everything back on its shelf."

"Just like you said we needed to do. Or you will say."

The wizard in Peggy’s sitting room looked contemplative. "So, you finished your tidying. Returned all the objects of unfathomable power to their cradles." Her mouth quirked in what was almost a smile. "All, except your own human soul."

Steve took a long breath and scrubbed his hand over his face. "I wasn’t — I wasn’t trying to do anything to the universe." He spoke to this strange, unearthly woman as if he owed her an explanation, or at least needed her understanding. "I didn’t mean to." And something in him seemed to crack, the brave face of Captain America giving way to a rawness of emotion that Peggy herself had never known him to show. It made Peggy’s heart crack in turn.

"The things I’ve seen," Steve said to the sorcerer, his voice soft and tired. "I just wanted to go home."

" _Excuse_ me," Peggy said. They both turned to her, Steve sorrowful, the wizard implacable. "I understand," she said to the wizard, "that you’re someone very important in — whatever all this is."

"I am the Ancient One," the woman replied. "Master of the Mystic Arts and Sorcerer Supreme of the planet Earth."

"Bully for you," Peggy said.

"Thank you," said the Ancient One.

"And according to you Steve’s done something to the universe."

"Certain types of interference in the flow of time," the Ancient One said, "give birth to new realities."

"Is it dangerous?"

"To whom?"

"None of that Sphingian rubbish," Peggy said sharply. "Should we be _doing_ something?"

"The time stream is stable," the Ancient One said, unruffled. "The divergence in the space-time continuum was as clean as they come. —If there were any danger, Agent Carter, I would have led with that." The slang she used was odd, but her meaning was clear.

"Well, I don’t know that, do I?" Peggy retorted. "I don’t know you. ...Do I?" she added, remembering how complicated this meeting was. "Know you?"

"You do now," the Ancient One answered, which really Peggy should have predicted at this point.

"What I’m asking," Peggy said, "is: Something’s happened to the universe, it's not going to un-happen, Steve obviously didn’t do it on purpose and nobody’s been hurt, so what is the point of your continuing to badger us about it?"

"You have a steadfast protective instinct," the Ancient One said, with no sense of mockery.

"You're damn right," Peggy said. Not for a moment would she be embarrassed by her desire to defend a super-soldier twice her size from something she barely understood. She would stand back to back with him and fight any force on Earth or elsewhere.

"I haven’t come to pass judgment," the sorcerer continued. "I came because when an event of this magnitude happens to the fabric of time, I am bound by a sacred oath to respond. An oath older than your institutions, older than your science. Older than England," with that little hint of warmth again.

Peggy looked to Steve to see what he thought of all this, but he no longer seemed to be listening at all. He'd seemed to be somewhere else since the sorcerer started going on about the space-time continuum.

"Peggy," Steve said. "Bucky's alive."

She was going to get whiplash, for God’s sake. " _What?_ In the — in the present?"

"And he’s not the only one, is he?" the Ancient One said to Steve. "Which is going to make things complicated later on."

"What?" Steve said, at first not seeming to understand her, and then, "oh, yeah, but that’s not important now. Okay, fine, it probably is important—"

"I'm afraid it's going to be terribly important," the Ancient One said. None of this tangent made a lick of sense to Peggy, and Steve just seemed impatient with it.

"Fine, it’s important, but it’s not urgent. _I’m_ fuckin’ fine — sorry Peggy — I’m fine. I’m just cold. We can deal with that whenever. Bucky’s in trouble right _now_. We have to get to him. We should call Howard. Now."

Half of what Steve was saying still sounded like gibberish, but enlisting Howard was something she certainly could manage. "What's Howard going to do?" Peggy asked, as she dug around for her address book.

"And when were you going to spring into action if I hadn’t come to see you," the Ancient One said to Steve.

"I was trying to figure it all out," Steve said. "I didn't want to, you know. Destroy the fabric of reality." His face was getting severe again, weighed down with unimaginable dilemmas he’d tried to take on alone. Peggy squeezed his hand.

"It’s going to be all right, Steve," she said.

"There’s a reason someone has to do my job," the sorcerer said to Peggy mildly.

"Are you going to help us rescue our friend, or not?" Peggy replied. "Since you know so much."

"That’s actually going to be much more your area," the Ancient One told her. "But once you’ve taken care of that, you’d all better visit me at Bleecker Street." She handed Peggy a calling card, its surface unlike any grain of paper she'd ever felt before. "And don’t forget the time machine. I really do need to get a look at it."

"It’s not magic," Steve said.

"Just bring it round," the Ancient One said, and she swirled her hands in the air to make another sudden opening in the world, stepped through, and vanished.

"Also, I know where your house is," Steve said to the empty space where the wizard had stood. "I've been there. In 2012."

Peggy set down the calling card — which she now noticed was, of course, blank — so she could hold open her address book and pick up the phone receiver. "Gramercy 4-0791," she said to the operator, and then let the little black book fall closed.

Steve took her hand again as she listened to the phone ring. "I have to tell you, Peggy. This is going to be some of the worst stuff you've ever seen. That's the best-case scenario, if we succeed. I didn't come here planning to bring this into your life. But that's just…" He looked down and shook his head, his thought trailing off. She knew, though. All too well.

"Oh, so you're the jinx, are you?" she said. "I thought it was me. Which of us is the jinx, and which is the charm?" Peggy looked back to the sorcerer's card, which, unsurprisingly, was no longer blank. "Could your magician friend tell us?"

"She's not really my friend. We just meet… met… once."

"Well, she wasn't before, in the future. But that was then." She smiled up at him, eyes twinkling. "This is now."

**Author's Note:**

> This story also has a post on [tumblr](https://sidleyparkhermit.tumblr.com/post/186430589855/new-fic-disturb-the-universe-mcu), if you like that sort of thing.


End file.
